By Jocelyn Gecker -
The Associated Press
Joe Clement, a high school teacher in Virginia, keeps track of the text messages parents send to their students.
— “How much did you score on the exam?”
— “Do you want chicken or hamburgers for dinner tonight?”
Clement has a request for those parents: that they stop texting their children while they are at school.
Parents are often aware of the distractions and mental health problems associated with smartphones and social media.
But teachers say that many do not know to what extent these problems affect student performance.
Rick Bowmer/AP
The culprits?
Parents themselves, whose often unnecessary text messages contribute to a climate of constant interruption and distraction from learning.
Even when schools regulate or ban cell phones, teachers find it difficult to enforce these rules.
Meanwhile, constant notifications on phones occupy the brain in a critical way, regardless of whether children look at their devices or not.
A few changes in parent behavior can help make cell phones less distracting at school.
This is what teachers and experts recommend.
Stop texting your child during class
Many parents stay in touch with their children by texting, but school is a place to focus on learning and develop independence.
Teachers say there may be a way to stay in touch with your child if you have an urgent change of plans or a family emergency:
call school officials.
If the message is not urgent, it can probably wait.
Think about it this way: “If you came to school and said, 'Can you take my child out of calculus class to tell you something that's not important?', we would say no,” explains Erin Rettig, a counselor. school in Virginia.
Teachers say parents can do more to help.
For example, they can tell their children not to text home unless it's urgent.
And if they do, ignore them.
“When your kids send you messages that can wait—like, 'Can I come to Brett's in five days?'—don't respond,” advises Sabine Polak, one of three parent co-founders of the Phone-Free Schools Movement.
“We have to stop being hooked on them.
“That only fuels the problems.”
Cutting the “digital umbilical cord”
Many parents became accustomed to being in constant contact with their children during the COVID-19 pandemic, when children were at home receiving online classes.
And some have maintained that communication.
“We call it the digital umbilical cord.
Many parents are not able to cut it.
And they have to do it,” says Clement.
Parents may not expect their children to respond immediately to text messages (although many do).
But when students pull out their phones to respond, they open the door to other distractions on social media.”
Texting and anxiety
In parent workshops, Rettig assures parents that they are contributing to children's anxiety by messaging them, tracking their location, and checking on their academic performance daily, which doesn't give children room to be independent.
Some teachers say they have received emails from parents right after giving out test results and before class ends, because children are instructed to communicate the results immediately to their parents.
Dr. Libby Milkovich, a pediatrician and developmental-behavioral specialist at Children's Mercy Kansas City, asks parents to think about how children are distracted by being connected to cell phones during school hours.
“By sending and receiving text messages, the child cannot practice self-control and problem-solving skills,” Milkovich explains.
“It's easy to send text messages, but when there's no phone, the child has to ask the teacher or do it on her own.”
Some minors who oppose the ban on cell phones in schools point out that it is useful to contact parents when they feel anxious or worried during class.
For children with severe anxiety who are used to texting their parents for reassurance, Milkovich suggests limiting contact gradually so the student slowly learns independence.
He also recommended parents ask themselves: Why does my child need constant access to the phone?
“Parents often say, 'I want to be able to reach my child at any time,' which has nothing to do with the child, but rather their own anxiety,” she explains.
The headphone problem
Beth Black, an English teacher at a San Francisco high school, asks parents to consider confiscating their children's old phones.
The school where Black teaches requires students to place their phones in a special box when they enter the classroom.
However, he has seen students keep an old, dead phone there and keep the working one.
Like many teachers, he points out that phones are not the only problem.
So are headphones.
“40% of my students wear at least one headset when they come to class,” says Black.
“Young people put their music on their phones and listen to it in the classroom with just one headphone.”
Turn off notifications
A good strategy is to deactivate all notifications that may be distracting.
To demonstrate just how distracting smartphones are, Clement did an experiment in class in which he asked his students to leave their phones sound on and turn on notifications for two minutes.
“It sounded like the old arcade machines: buzzing, beeping and ringing for two whole minutes,” he explains.
Many studies have revealed that students check their phones frequently during classes.
A study last year by Common Sense Media revealed that
teens are bombarded with 237 notifications a day
.
Around 25% of them are during the school day, especially from friends on social networks.
“Any time our concentration is interrupted, it takes a lot of brain energy to recover it,” says Emily Cherkin, a Seattle professor turned screen-time management consultant.
Teachers indicate that the best school policy regarding cell phones is to physically remove the phone from the student.
Otherwise, it's hard not to pick it up if it rings.
“When the phone vibrates in your pocket, your attention focuses on the pocket.
And she wonders: 'How do I bring it to the table?
How do I check it?” explains Randy Freiman, a high school chemistry teacher in upstate New York.
“You ask him a question and he hasn't heard a word you said.
His brain is somewhere else.”